


the sun and the size of it

by alethiometry



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-22 18:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17065022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethiometry/pseuds/alethiometry
Summary: “Do you have a name, boy?” the tall man asks. He stands in the shade of trees not yet felled, watching the boy work. His coat looks heavy and worn in this tropical heat, but his eyes are as alert as any the boy has seen.The boy squints. The tall man smiles, eyes crinkling in the sun and just as warm.“Let me rephrase my question,” he says. “What do the others call you, when they need you?”





	the sun and the size of it

**Author's Note:**

> This fic took me maybe two hours to write... and almost four months to come up with a title, which is just ironic. Names are hard, y'all.
> 
> Many many thanks to [Askance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance) for looking this over!

The tall man arrives on the shores of his master’s settlement quite by accident; his fleet, not quite wrecked in the storm that blew through in the night, is still in need of repairs, and from the joviality with which they regard each other, barrel-chested and tall and bearded the both of them, they are familiar with one another. His master even invites the tall man to sit with him, to share the choicest cuts of wild game roasting over the cooking fire.

The boy does his best to ignore the smell of the meat, to push through the gnawing in his belly as he assists the others in hauling lumber out to the worst-hit of the ships, which lists heavily on her side in the shallows as whitecaps lap at her cracked hull.

He’s the smallest of the boys here, so he throws a hooked rope to pull himself up the hull, and wriggles through an open gunport, dropping on all fours into its belly. All around him, the ship groans in the midday breeze, its sides heaving like ribs of a great, ancient thing. He’s heard tell of old things before, whispered among the other men—the older men, men who know more, have seen more of the world, than the settlement where they live. The men who, in the secret of night, answer to something even greater than the master.

The boy never believed the snippets of tales he overheard the men swapping; they exist merely as words, and words do not give him a place to sleep, food to eat. He only knows the master.

He takes out his knife and begins sawing at the twisted ropes and canvas protruding through the deck above him, and wonders how such cumbersome beasts can take so gracefully to the open sea.

When he finishes untangling the mast and sails, the others send him back to the yard to de-bark more lumber. He runs for the trees, lest his slowness angers the master, still soaked through with seawater where the waves splashed at him through the hull.

 

———

 

“Do you have a name, boy?” the tall man asks. He stands in the shade of trees not yet felled, watching the boy work. His coat looks heavy and worn in this tropical heat, but his eyes are as alert as any the boy has seen.

The boy squints. The tall man smiles, eyes crinkling in the sun and just as warm.

“Let me rephrase my question,” he says. “What do the others call you, when they need you?”

“They don’t,” the boy replies, looking down at his feet. The tall man crouches down, then—and even squatting in the dirt he seems to tower over the boy. “Need me, I mean.”

“And what of Albinus—your master? Does he ever need you?”

He feels his hand creep inadvertently, then, up to the branding on his chest.

“There’s too many other boys here for him to call me ‘boy’. He points at us when he needs us.”

“I see.” The tall man rises to his feet, smoothing out his great, long coat with broad hands. One of the men—the one with the torn lip and only one eye, crueler than the others—comes round just then to inspect the progress.

“Faster, boy!” the one-eyed man snarls, and brings his switch down across the boy’s back. The boy bites his lip but doesn’t wince, doesn’t whimper—simply keeps his head down and continues to chip away at the bark. His grip tightens on the blade as the lashes rain down one after another, and he ignores the pain, ignores the sticky, warm wetness of blood trickling from an open lash, and imagines slashing the one-eyed man’s other eye with the blade in his hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees the tall man stop and turn to look at him, just once, before walking away.

 

———

 

The tall man is named Teach, and he doesn’t find the boy stowed away in the galley until they are well under way, a strong wind filling the great sails of his mightiest ship. When he does find him, gnawing hungrily at tooth-breaking hardtack, he laughs, eyes crinkling up again like the warmth of a setting sun.

“I suspected you might join us,” says the man named Teach. “Come, boy. Let us find you a place among my crew.”

 

———

 

He is not a boy anymore, says Teach, but a man. But among the other men here, older and braver and stronger, he still feels like a boy. That part is not much different than the camp; he is always the smallest, the youngest, the least of any of them.

But these men are different. No less wild than his old master’s men, but different still. They are driven. Methodical. They stand up straight and look one another in the eye. They have purpose. They are free.

They show the boy, at Teach’s behest, how to live aboard a ship. How to rig a sail, how to tie a knot, how to fire guns and swing swords. How, in short, to be a pirate.

He learns quickly that he is a quick learner.

The men like him. They give him a wide berth at first, but the boy knows how to make himself useful, and they like that. They let him sleep in a hammock like the rest of them, serve him the same food as the rest of them, treat him just like he is one of them.

And so, he becomes one of them.

“We must find you a name,” Teach says early one morning as they pore over his books. Why he’s so insistent on the boy learning to read is anybody’s guess. But the boy likes Teach—trusts him, now that he’s learned the meaning of trust, here, among these men. So he takes whatever Teach offers.

And it’s always an offer, Teach reminds him. The boy is free now, beholden to nobody save for those he may choose to keep company with.

Choice is a funny thing. The boy would have gladly followed Teach anywhere and everywhere, even before he learned the meaning of free will. And yet, of his own free will, he stays.

“I don’t need a name,” the boy responds, then jabs at a word on the page with a calloused finger. “S-H-I-P-W-R-E-C-K. Sh... ship. The first half says ‘ship’, I know that. W-R… that’s just an R sound, isn’t it? Ship. Wreck. That says ‘shipwreck’.”

“Very good. And yes, you do. For who will remember you in the history books, if they have nothing to call you by? You must have a name. Do you remember anything of your mother? Your father?”

The boy shakes his head.

Teach nods sagely. “In a way, I suppose this could be construed as some strange luxury of agency, bestowed upon you at this stage of your life as penance for what you’ve already endured.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have my name; it was given to me by my family, and though I am often called Blackbeard by those who fear me most, I still regard myself as Edward Teach. There is no changing that. But you, boy—you may choose what people will call you. Very well. This is a monumental decision I have saddled you with. Take all the time you need.”

 

———

 

They are beset by pirate hunters off the coast of Tortuga, and though the boy still has much to learn from Teach’s crew with regards to the combative arts, he takes his first life. The hunter’s hand is still on his, the hilt of the dagger buried deep in his belly. He groans in agony as the boy yanks the knife away, blood spilling in every direction as he slumps onto his side.

“So this is how it ends for me,” the hunter whispers, staring past the boy, eyes shining and unfocused, bloodied corners of his mouth tugged up in a delirious grin. “In a savage land, far from home. Murdered by a child.”

“What’s your name?” the boy asks, crouching down.

The man tells it to him in a choked whisper, and dies.

 

———

 

“My name is Charles Vane,” he tells Teach later, joining him on deck before last bells. The sun sinks below the horizon, the clouds a brilliant splash of bloodred reflecting in the distant sea, and Teach smiles down at him with crinkled eyes.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Charles Vane,” he says, proffering his hand.

Charles Vane grasps his hand firmly in his own, standing tall at Teach’s side.


End file.
